Bang's Blogs Retrospective 2024

 

(Art by Flip)

Goooooooooooooooooooooooood evening Bang Gang, it is I, BangJang96. We’ve reached the end of Year 1 of Bang’s Blogs, and in just one short year…we’ve had a blast. And now it's time to bring it all to close and look back on Bang’s Blogs 2024, and just reminisce on the crazy ride it's been. This blog will go over my in-depth and personal thoughts on all the blogs that happened this year; the process, the people, the things we learned along the way, the fun we had, the debate/if I think its right or wrong, but also things I wish I could’ve done better since I’m far from perfect, hence why this is a retrospective; looking back on how I lived and learned.

I’m flabbergasted by what this has become and what it has grown into, and I think the vision, business model if you will, has been a success in terms of people coming back to work on the blogs and doing the blogs that only get bigger. And I’m far from the only person who wants to ‘new territory’, genuinely I just threw some DC vs Marvel at the wall and people slowly trickled in and gave my blog a shot in terms of covering some lesser known territories, and I decided to roll with it. And it worked! So please enjoy all my thoughts, along with some art by the many people who helped along the way.

Let’s end this year off with…with…with a…

ok yeah with a bang I’m sorry :( 

Cassandra Cain vs X-23

(SirusStuff)

The very first blog. For those who aren’t aware, I got back from my Latter-day Saints religious mission back in August of 2023, and I had left the community for two years. But, trial as I might, people waited for my return, and frankly it was insanely hype. Which means I didn’t have much room to breathe when I got home, and within a proverbial nanosecond, Lunge asked me to help him research Cassandra Cain vs X-23 for a prediction blog. I was somewhat aware blogs were a thing when Nemesis Bloodryche, one of my closest friends, emailed me while I was in Texas that Speedy and Kingsly had made a Phoenix vs Raven blog, I just didn’t expect them to start becoming a growing force, but obviously the DB hiatus happened. I didn’t know what I was doing, and most of the people that said they’d help were just booted off because they weren’t doing anything, and Lunge and I had to get more people to help. 

Going into it, I was still having to play catch up on street tier stats, and only really got up to speed when I helped with the G1 Moon Knight vs Azrael blog, which made the process for Cass vs Laura much easier. Even still, I was fully expecting Laura to win, especially when we realized we had to use the Krakoa clone due to it still technically being Laura herself/the status quo, otherwise it would’ve been far easier to argue Cass wins since she doesn’t have the adamantium skeleton, but a fully fledged Wolverine being thrown in the mix was a bit daunting, and admittedly I felt like I was watching everyone debate the match and me agreeing/disagreeing along the way, but ultimately Cass’s skill and speed advantage were so detrimental, like pressure points that can knock someone out is dangerous, so I eventually sided Cass. I didn’t think the blog would come out nice, felt like it was gonna be a bit sloppy looking since it was my first blog, and honestly at the time I didn’t even wanna upload it, but no one else aside from kaiser had a blog at the time, so I just decided to put it under this goofy name called ‘Bangs Blogs’, unaware of this being far from my last outing. At this point in time, my plans were really limited to just doing this and Larfleeze vs Annihilus so I uploaded it and was amazed that people liked it, and loved how in depth it felt, and at the time was praised for the Black Wind feat shifting the meta…which aged like milk but that’s besides the point. 

A Batman character beating a Wolverine seemed insane out loud, but I think its result is right, especially since while Laura is skilled, her fighting style is straightforward enough to avoid the more important attacks, particularly the claws, and her stamina is crazy dangerous in this regard. For a first time blog, this one was actually pretty great looking back, and it turned Laura into one of my favorite Marvel characters period. 

Thank you to Lunge, Kaiser, Round 1 Fight, Spirit, and Resident Joe for helping me on the very first Bang’s Blog. 

Larfleeze vs Annihilus

(Roxx)

(GnomeChompski)

This one was also in the workings for a while, and was even spoken into existence when Rina ALSO emailed me while in Texas asking me if I wanted to work on a blog for this when I got back, and I could not say no to covering my favorite Lantern that isn’t Kyle Rayner, and it only made sense to have my Marvel counterpart AkhilPDX and Birb, the creator of the match in the experience. We did a little switcheroo, I covered Annihilus with Rina and Akhil covered Larfleeze with Birb. This did take a while but by this point, Rina and Akhil became college students just like me so it wasn’t the end of the world, and eventually we were able to release the blog. The process was fun, rereading Annihilation was always a fun time and the Thanos Infinity Relativity feats when reading through it were fucking insane. 

I’ll admit to a fault I was really hoping Larfleeze would win since he was my favorite Lantern, but I do think when trying to be objective I also thought Larfleeze almost had everything covered really. Energy absorption is just hilarious hard countered by the fact that Annihilus would go insane trying to handle the orange light, and Larfleeze would yoink it back, and his troops would just eat away at the wave, but the wincon being Larfleeze steals the rod is goddamn hilarious because it is so in-character, just seeing that shiny thang on Annihilus’ neck. I haven’t really seen any good argument against Larfleeze winning to be honest. We had a ton of fun, and Annihilus also became one of my favorite Marvel characters ever, and Annihilation is forever one of the coolest Marvel stories (seriously look at this masterpiece by Gabriel Dell'Otto), and just the sheer amount of hilarious comparisons between the two is funny, like the fact that they both have a Christmas special. Blogs reception was particularly feeling it like an upset, which for many was awesome since Annihilus for some reason was the winner from people close to me, but Larfleeze came through with a diabolical soul stealing wincon. Big ups my boy. 

Special thanks to Rina Antiqua, AkhilPDX, and Birb for turning this into probably my current most wanted DC vs Marvel match. 

Sadako vs Slenderman

(Bang)

(GnomeChompski)

(GnomeChompski)

(Garf)

(SirusStuff)

I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. I have a lot to say about this one. It’ll pretty much be the entire lore.

A long time ago in March of this year, I made a thread for the asymmetrical horror game, Dead by Daylight, in hopes of finding all the killers a neat and dandy opponent. Admittedly, this game has just been my fixation for a majority of the year, almost to a point where I burnt myself out of it…oops. I was fiending to do something Dead by Daylight related if I could help it, though the more accurate answer as I’m typing this is I just wanted to start or do anything. Moon Knight vs Azrael was done and the other two blogs were experiencing delays, so I just joined what I could, like Media Madness’s Blade vs Buffy blog. Nothing really seemed interesting. So back to Dead by Daylight talk, one day we’re just talking about opponents and dear old Shark says something that caught my eye:

Yeah at first I did not see the appeal of this match. I thought it was just tendrils vs hair (Gnome you almost fumbled the sell but you saved it) until further connections were explained to me, and it kinda sat with me? I went, “ok cool”. Honestly looking through old gcs or dms with others I didn’t really find any moment where I decided “yeah lets do it as a blog!”, so for 15 days straight it just sat with me as an idea. Around this time Dead by Daylight was particularly exciting due to the raging success of the All Things Wicked chapter, so I knew I wanted to do something with it, but none of the licensed killers had anything worth doing a blog for. Dredge shat on poor Ennard, and I had a shitty encounter with a Knight player that just made me tune out Knight vs Apollyon (for now), so I took a very point-blank shot in the dark, and I asked if anyone would like to join…

Little did we know that this would be one of the craziest experiences ever…

We just decided to jump in. At this time, I didn’t know anything about Sadako or Slenderman at all. I knew of them, but I didn’t know how powerful they were or what they could do, and for the longest time, the world of powerscaling hasn’t really either, and the first question before any research even started was what we do for canon. Despite there being some weird pushback nowadays about what is and isn’t used, I think we handled Slenderman to the best of our ability without treading into just borderline fanfics, and I’m especially proud of how we figured out Sadako in a way that made the most sense, and I think most people were fine with the novels being included. I think people mostly took issue with Marbel Hornets not being used since it felt like some brainrot explanation to say “he looks like Slenderman but isn’t Slenderman”, even though there is more to the issue at hand, and it's not like it had any standout powers other versions of Slenderman didn’t have so go figure. 

When we had the canon figured out, we dove in. What made this blog special is quite literally the fact that I took a band of people who have never been on a blog before except for ThiccGrimes, and they were just some of the most dedicated gigachads I’ve ever seen. Gnome was sweeping the OG Creepypasta readings, meanwhile Echo was just making his way down all the Ringu films, Grimes was our resident calcer for the time being, everyone was just pulling their weight and for first timers, they were fucking awesome. More people came along for the ride like iceking, BiteRaptor, and iceking, and we were deep in the trenches. Shark had made his way through the Slender games and the movies, which left the research to be the more daunting tasks; recovering the Sadako crossover movies, reading the rest of the novels, and for Slenderman, dealing with the fucking Slenderverse, which was…a lot of YouTube videos. Very weird ones as well, and watching them really felt like I was in 2013, which is around the time Slenderman was the face of internet horror. And honestly, it did a number on me and made me really want to learn more about the character and its creation and why it became such an icon, from that very first “Something Awful” forum, and I grew to appreciate more of why people liked these weirder ideas and the brand of Creepypasta when before, I just saw it as cringe internet fanfics. 

As far as making the blog look awesome, there were just some nice touches everyone did all around. The Slenderman background is some of the most creative stuff we’ve done on Bang’s Blogs, my idea of the spooky borders around Slenderman’s powers that were conveyed via text was a hit, and the sections were just written well with respect to the characters, from the references here and there to iconic Slenderman photos to Sadako’s real life taxi service. I’m also proud of myself for reaching out to legitimate Creepypasta experts that weren’t VS debaters, it helped me recover lost media to clarify some crucial scaling and make some connections with the canon in ways I would’ve never found otherwise, which normally in VS can be cringey, but with a character like Slenderman I don’t think there’s any shame in asking an expert about what you separate Slenderman by. 

Things really got awesome when the blog was nearing completion. Initially, Echo wasn’t sure if the Vs Bunshinsaba movies were really worth looking into since the Vs Kayako movies offered little use in the debate, and it was very much just looking like an easy enough Slenderman W, but Echo decided to do so anyways since on the side, I was hounding the remaining Ring novels for what we could find, and this was where things get interesting. The Vs Bunshinsaba movie and novels both introduced forces beyond the normal universe of the Ring known as the Loop and the Demonic Abyss, and Echo could only yell “Eureka!” at such a find. Sadako had access to a realm intersected every parallel universe, and a highly advanced virtual world known as the LOOP, which I later found more stuff for in the Dreamcast Ringu game. This completely changed the potential power level Sadako was operating at, much more so turned the tide around how fast and how unkillable Sadako really is. 

It was just this very pivotal moment in time, where a bunch of us were laughing our heads off at the sheer amount of crazy information we’ve found out about these characters, how fun they were, how awesome they were, and just how insane they were, that was just some of the best times of my life in this VS community. A band of newbies to these foreign characters knew so much more about them then anyone else at the time, and we were just waiting to share our knowledge. It was sentimental for us because the fruits of our labor were…honestly more than we bargained for. We spent 10 hours debating the outcome on a Slender W or stalemate, and regardless of what you think, those Sadako findings changed everything. It made the blog exponentially more interesting, the debate more interesting, and even furthermore, the matchup more interesting, as this was the first time we were really seeing Sadako lean into more eldritch horror, the type that’s scary enough to feel like the worlds crumbling around you…literally. These guys felt like my brothers, and like we had just beat Team Eternal in the DBDLeague Spring Invitational Tournament, because we were hyped for what we knew was gonna come next. 

Initially we were going to release the blog on June 11th, since Sinestro vs Morgoth was coming out on the 10th and we knew it’d be horrendously overshadowed, and even then I didn’t like uploading blogs later than the morning. However, two things occurred; I was annoyed at the aftermath of Singoth for many reasons I will not disclose publicly, but also someone brought to our attention that June 10th…was Slenderman’s birthday. Any thoughts of feeling overshadowed just left the room to be honest, and I was determined to just get this out, and given it was only the afternoon at that time I figured we may as well, and just see what happens. We had been pretty vague about promoting the blog other than it would get crazy, so we weren’t sure how it was gonna pan out with everyone. 

Honestly the reception for this blog was unlike any other Bang’s Blogs experience. 

Like this will 100% feel like hardcore glazing but the amount of praise, compliments, and reception the blog received was just unprecedented, to the point where people think it should be blog of the year. People were shocked about the Ring having cosmology, they were ecstatic to see just how powerful Slenderman truly is since he does have a lot of fans, it became a lot of people's favorite blogs of the year or just of all time, it kickstarted threads, thumbnails, a DDB, and it got so many people talking about it just in general. It truly was the Bang’s Blogs that put me on the map for real this time. It was the perfect storm of me taking a group of freshmeat and putting them to work on a blog with two popular horror characters that no one knew how they worked, and turning it into an all-timer. I’m not gonna be bashful about this, I’m so proud of this blog to this day, and everyone who helped with it should be also. It changed the landscape of horror matches at large. It wasn’t the first horror blog since there was Freddy Krueger vs Pennywise, but the spike in horror blogs that came after Slendako was insane. Pinhead vs Tallman, Leprechaun vs Wishmaster, Killer Croc vs Jason Voorhees, Ghostface vs Fisherman, Leatherface vs Hillbilly, Ellen Ripley vs Sarah Connor, etcetc. Granted I acknowledge that a few of these were probably planned regardless. It also opened the door to lots of Creepypasta matches, and people wondering what other characters could be of use in particular for Slenderman’s side, and lots of weirder internet horrors and mediums have been more openly explored as a result. This blog did so many fantastic things.

In retrospect, while I do wish I could’ve reached out to artists about making some better scaling images and some stuff here and there could’ve been formatted better, the final result is still the best. It’s just awesome. It's been many months now and people actually think this has a chance of happening at some point down the line, Speedy gave the blog a shoutout during a blind ballot banter and other members seemed to dig the match, and to this day I still maintain it is the best for both, and one of the few matches that truly encapsulates the feeling of eldritch cosmic horror, and I’ll admit I’m defensive about this one because some of the reception/aftermath was a tad annoying cause some people magically became Sadako experts and said “it doesn’t match her vibe or her character” which, don’t care + didn’t ask. I’ve even thought of making a defense of the fights' animation potential and all that but that’s probably not needed.

As far as if I think this fight is right or not, I’ve gone back and forth a little over time but I still think Slenderman should win, lots of it might come down to interpretation of how Sadako’s regeneration works, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for siding either Slenderman or Sadako wins via stalemate, I just think Slenderman’s arguments work better more blatantly due to the AP advantage being the backbone for it. According to Fanon wiki member and good friend Wither, who was a big aid in this blogs canon, it does turn out however that Fear Mythos is usable, as the dimensional bleeding actually acts as a nexus for all the Slender canons, so at some point I should probably fix that, not like a complete do-over but move some things around. 

Thank you to GnomeChompski, ThiccGrimes, Echo, Shark, iceking, BiteRaptor, Aether, KirbyKid9, and Wither for helping me with one of my favorite passion projects of the year. 

Clayface vs Sandman

(Garf)

(SirusStuff)

I got to know Gnome a lot through the Slendako work, and one day he and I were chattin’ about what other cool blogs we could do, and he thought Clayface vs Sandman would be cool. Sadly I wasn’t sure if it was in the cards for me for some reason, but when the server went up, I thought that it’d be a good time to start it, since it's probably my most wanted street tier DC vs Marvel idea. Fairly easy workload wise, and we found some cool new powers for Clayface and learned some cool new things about Sandman’s immortality. Everyone was oddly very cautious on siding someone so there wasn’t a lot of discussion on who wins until the very end when everything was on the table, and a big debate was if Clayface should even have electricity, but No Man’s Land was enough for people to say “yeah makes sense”, so he came out with one wincon while Sandman…didn’t really have any? Admittedly I also came into it with a fucking hardcore agenda; debunk herald Clayface and herald Sandman. Sometimes debates about street tiers being herald are a bit annoying, and I channel that hatred into debunking stupid arguments, and I’m proud of le funny images I made for that one. I was happy Clayface barely pulled through since he is my favorite Batman villain, research went well, and we finally had an actual debate about a match few people have really properly debated. 

Thank you to Akhil, Momo, Spirit, gio, Garf, Boomer, Pas, Tru, Br3ndan, Lakuita, Guru, Lunge, Gnome, and Why am I here for finally bringing this debate to life. 

Revan vs Dark Urge

(Landon1195)

(TripleCx3)

(RestaurantWorried)

(Aggravating_Floorgor)

(TWILTY)

The night when Larfleeze vs Annihilus dropped, my longtime ol’ friend Tman reached out to me very ambitiously about this match. It was on my radar since Tman usually feeds me any new match he sees like a true media man, and he wanted to push for this to be a blog under my name, and I was hesitant. Much more so when Tman said I should make a server for this very matter, and this right here is the reason in the Bang Gang lore that the server came about, is Tman asking me to make it for Revan vs Dark Urge, which quickly became a very anticipated idea since it was riding off the hype of Baldur’s Gate 3, along with the prospect of diving into the temperamental world of Dungeons & Dragons. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea since at the time, I thought making new servers was a waste of time because there was so many blog hangout servers already, as well as just DB servers in general, both public and private. But Tman insisted, and I eventually just shrugged and gave it a shot, so you have Revan vs Dark Urge to thank for the channel's conception. 

This blog was an interesting one for sure. I can safely say it's my most wanted Star Wars fight, and tackling a more Legends exclusive character was super interesting now that I think about it. It was a first time blog for a lot of people like Landon, who did a masterful job at documenting lots of Revan’s main content, and the side of DnD, while smaller, all worked together to compile a surprising amount of information in such a short amount of time, and I’ll admit it was surprising to see there was a strong enough debate, long enough to last a few days worth of VCs. I don’t think the verdict really changes at all to be honest, but my god it's so cool I don’t really care either way, it just radiates so much badass energy because of the connections. 

Looking back though, I do wish we went about some things better. There are just a lot of buzzwords thrown into the blog that when reading just look out of place and clunky, and the Before the Verdicts sections especially suffered from this as far as being digestible to read and looking good in the first place. I think the idea that we ‘needed more time’ is half-true, I think as far as getting it done/all on the document, I maintain I was justified in speaking up about the pace, but we did need more time in actually going over the document/making it look better or presenting it better and just making sure it was neater. But outside of these, it still looks fantastic. Revan’s main content devoid of stats and scaling looks really well made and thorough to the character, almost out of a YouTube video, and Durge’s content is new, exciting, and plentiful. And it certainly worked its magic, given Revan vs Dark Urge is in the running for the first potential BG/D&D rep on the show of Death Battle, garnering the attention of Liam in particular, which is a fantastic pull to have. 

Thank you to Tman, Rina, Landon, bladeworksmaster, Time, TripleCx3, Restaurant, Guru, TWILTY, Joe, and Kira for putting this new match on the map faster than any other. 

Knight vs Apollyon

(NormallyNormal)

This is the epitome of my hyperfixation finally coming alive. I’ll admit it, yes I was very trigger happy in wanting to do this one when TripleCx3 brought this to my attention because I was just waiting for a Dead by Daylight idea to come to mind, and when I realized this is doable, I pounced. Easily. No questions asked. I set that shit up and invited everyone like that. And we got it done fast too! My main drive in doing it was just a Dead by Daylight deepdive, which was really fun; go through the character’s lore through cosmetics, trailers, and the extensive deepdives into their lore in the tomes/archives. We found just lots of neat stuff that while not super crazy, was just a nice flavor to really show that we did our homework. Rina came in CLUTCH with small building DbD though, which was a huge payoff to have. It didn’t win Knight the fight necessarily but it did make it more debatable to be honest, and we just had fun with it while also just playing DbD with each other for the first time since I usually played with friends in real life, but this was the first time I got to play with lots of the boys online. 

Looking back I still think it's right sadly, but again I do think it is debatable. I probably shouldn’t have undersold his strength advantage however, which was embarrassingly pointed out to me many times in the reception, and there also was some pushback on some of the more…silly humor on Apollyon’s side which like, I didn’t really pay attention to that much. Truly, we were Dead by Daylight.

Thank you to Gio, Saul, Gnome, Hi Hi, Trip, Aeva, Echo, Spirit, Momo, and Coach Boomer for joining me on my stupid horror hyperfixation. 

Mandalorian vs Courier

(Kaiser)

This was one of the first quote-un-quote ‘popular’ matches to be requested to me that wasn’t new or just…DC vs Marvel, so the purpose of this blog wasn’t really to show why it's worth it since everyone already wants it, it's a big non-Force user matchup as far as Star Wars goes, it was primarily just to have fun and give it a look into since non-Force users being analyzed felt like a breath of fresh air after something like Luke vs Saber. The Mandalorian had some cool new stuff we didn’t really expect, and the Courier had some funny wincons. 

In retrospect, I am going to go on a small rant here. People cite this a lot of the time as the worst Bang’s Blogs as in like, it was bad because it was ‘rushed’ and ‘I got mad’, and people throw that in my face a lot just for no reason? Like, “oh we should redo this blog because it was rushed along” which is just blatantly wrong. Courier wasn’t exactly impossible to research and lots of it was just finding the proper links for stuff and filling out a lot of his weapons, and the Mandalorian was a similar case where we just needed some small stuff done for him like scaling images. The issue was I was pinging plenty of times, putting breaks in between some days to give some space, and just constantly asking if anyone was doing this or that, and no one was responding. Did I get annoyed? Yes. Was I personally upset at anyone? No. I didn’t go to my friends in pms berating them or anything, I was just wondering why lots of stuff that is easy to organize or help with was just not getting done, and I wasn’t getting any solid answers at all to the point where I just hopped in and did some stuff myself. It did make the blog go a lot faster, but that’s because the stuff that was left to do was so easy to do that it did come quicker then people would think, because that is indeed what happens when you lock in.

Could it have been better? Probably. Sadly some people said it felt like the urge to get people to work was reflected onto the blog which didn’t really make me feel the best, and the reception on this one in other servers was less kind then the others, partially because of the Courier’s side apparently. Maybe I could’ve done some things better though, but I do think it's unfair that I am for some reason blamed for this blog. Can’t feel too happy about it sometimes.

Thank you to Roxx, door-kun, Saul, Landon, Gio, Yoshi, Boomer, Restaurant, Pas, Triple, Joshski, and Guru for helping.

Link vs Tarnished

(TWILTY)

(Aggravating_Floorgor)

This was the first official ‘pitch’ to Bang’s Blogs. A good friend of mine named TWILTY who I shared some servers with wanted to help with Revan vs Dark Urge, and at some point he said he wanted to start up a blog for Link vs Tarnished on my server, which did catch me off guard a little since I know nothing about Legend of Zelda or Elden Ring, but it did get me wondering how many more people would reach out about hosting a blog here which to me, felt like a sign of trust that meant a lot to me, so I do have this blog to thank for inspiring me to be more open with ‘pitches’ in the beginning stages of the server, as lots of blogs that came to follow were pitched to me. 

TWILTY and his team did a fantastic job, and this was probably one of the first blogs where at most, I was overseeing it format-wise and just making sure they were working, TWILTY was the director and just leading everyone along and I was very impressed with their work ethic, drive, and passion for this. Opportunistically this was being made around the time Elden Ring had a DLC release, so it was cool to see in real time how it’d affect the match. It is hard for me to comment on the process and debate since I am out of my depth here, but I tried my best to follow and there was a lot of back and forth, and there were a lot of firsts for this blog. Fanon user Lakuita made the first short animation for it, which turned out lovely, it became one of the longest blogs of all time, sitting in the top 3 until Spike vs Ethan and Bowser vs Eggman dethroned it. It was also the first direct shoutout from a researcher! Lousy read the blog and that was a huge deal for lots of us and this definitely made people think we could see this match on the show at some point down the line, and visually it is by far some of the best of Bang’s Blogs, from the titles given to both to the scaling images to the very tasteful BTVs that covered a few long time Zelda topics. My hats are off to the team for this one, they made it look amazing, and I’m honored you chose me as the name to put it under.

Thank you to TWILTY, Igneous, bladeworksmaster, Dammerung, Flip, Hi Hi, Pas, Homie, Rina, Cal, Yerm, Boomer, Lakuita, and Gnome. 

Sterling Archer vs Stan Smith

(Garf v1)

(Garf v2)

(Garf v3)

(SirusStuff)

Pitched by none other than Gandalf himself, Garf. This was a crazy one but by virtue of wanting to have some variety, an adult cartoon match seemed very left field and I was not opposed to it. Garf from day 1 really wanted to do this match and eventually I gave in and I wanted to see what he and the girls and gals could do, and I did do some preparations for this, like watching American Dad and eventually after the blog, a bit of Archer. They’re both very funny, and I know it's a Buzz Lightyear meme to say but American Dad is surprisingly very funny and underrated in that regard. The big goal of this match was to put it on the spotlight as far as cartoon ideas in general, though in hindsight for adult swim there isn’t a whole lot of competition? By that I mean there aren't a lot of big ideas. The biggest ones are Homer vs Peter, Bendy vs Roger/Rick Sanchez, and Eric Cartman vs Master Shake/Porky. Sure there’s weirder ideas like PC Principal vs Uncle Ruckus or Francine vs Beth but those aren’t…big ideas to be frank. And ultimately I’d say Garf and his crew set out to do exactly what they said and wanted to do, put it on the map. And I do think it got the job done!

As far as I know this is one of the more clear upsets, much more so then Larfleeze vs Annihilus. Most everyone was expecting Stan to win due to leaning on being more cartoony then a series like Archer, so Sterling winning was definitely an upset, but one that people were pretty ok with due to being so surprised, and it definitely made more people check out Archer. One thing that I found really cool was Garf somehow enlisting the help of The Dan Man Show, a very popular YouTuber for American Dad content to help us with the blog and it was a real honor to have had him! Even gave me a shoutout on his channel in the community tab. 

Thank you to Garf, Niko, Normally, Yuix, Markx, blessedaura, R1F, Dantheman, Roxx, and Frisk.

Bubsy vs Gex

(Garf)

Another case where…I don’t know a lot about these two. But it was enjoyable watching a smaller group of people just write this blog with fourth wall breaking characters, that sorta thing I don’t see very often, and it was definitely a new thing as far as doing stuff differently in blogs. Learning about their histories and weird importance was funny, and there even being a cosmology section was also pretty funny, much more so the fact that they explained how this little lizard lookin’ ass could potentially scale to it, despite it being a simpler blog I still think it came out great and fun, definitely not as talked about as the other Bang’s Blogs sadly. And yes, it's still right.

Thank you to Clock, Cabbage, door, Spidey, R1F, Roxx, Tairo, and Gnome…what could’ve gone wrong? 

Ellen Ripley vs Sarah Connor

(Yuix)

This was the only blog chosen by fate. One day I’m talking with the Bang Gang and from one topic to another, everyone decided they wanted to see a Halloween themed blog. And I’m an opportunist, so I decided that if I was to do it, why not spin a wheel rather than confront how indecisive I am? So I put Nemesis vs Subject Delta, Violator vs Blackheart, Beetlejuice vs Ghostbusters, Demetri vs Slayer, Spinal vs Cervantes, and Ellen vs Sarah on a wheel. If it landed on the match, it's out. Came down to Demetri vs Slayer or Ellen vs Sarah, and the wheel of fate decided that fighting games could wait, and the ultimate final girls needed some love. Why do I say I think this was fate? 

Way back in Sadako vs Slenderman’s production, ThiccGrimes, aka the goat of horror, was already thinking about what other horror blogs could be worth doing, like Rick Grimes vs Bill Overbeck, or Ellen Ripley vs Sarah Connor. Gnome thought it’d be cool to host it on my blog but with the blog's growing roster and number of blogs, it became lost in transmission until we realized we had a chance to do it. A small one, but not an impossible one. And when it landed on Ellen vs Sarah, it was super hype, and before I knew it ThiccGrimes was at the servers doorstep ready to represent Alien, as were the likes of Yuix for the side of Terminator. 

And it was awesome. We met the Halloween deadline for one, big ups to Yuix in particular for going through the grueling pain of having to watch the Sarah Connor Chronicles where he found…jackshit really. The VC we had was fun and chill and I was surprised to see what it came down to, and this was probably considerably another upset since most people saw Sarah as the winner. 

Another fun part of this was getting to show it to my dad. My parents do support this hobby I do and try to read the blogs when they can, or just ask questions about it (like why I’m not getting paid for it lmao), but this one in particular I had every reason to. My parents did name me after one of the Terminator characters, and Alien is one of the first movies my parents watched together when they met, so finally doing this was surreal for those reasons and the fact that it finally came to fruition outside of the Slendako group chat. Ellen winning is correct, and it definitely pushed this higher on the horror ideas list as an outstanding idea.

Thank you to Yuix, ThiccGrimes, Tario, Yerm, Saul, iceking, spycrab, door, Gnome, Flip, and Spirit for a spooktacular blog.

Atom Eve vs Gwen Tennyson

(SirusStuff)

Another pitch that writes itself enough that we went into this trying to see what we could find or shake up from other blogs, specifically for Eve. This was a big year for Invincible in a few ways, obviously in part due to Season 2 but also Omni-Man’s return to the show against Bardock, which…had an interesting aftermath. I’m not even gonna mention it by the way. I was initially scared this would feel like every other Invincible blog until I realized that Eve has hax, and isn’t just a stat brick this time so there was some uniqueness to it. 

Unfortunately, this blog lost a lot of drive very fast. Eve’s side had already technically been done comic-wise as far as research, and no one really made an effort in wrangling the TV show stuff until the end of the blog, and throughout the entire thing, no one really made an effort to discuss what the Before the Verdicts would be or how Eve should be scaled, so we did end up with a dumb shitpost sun disk section and a very similar Omnipotus section to the Omnidock blog. Gwen’s side was taking so long, and while I commend everyone for mostly pulling their weight, I’m not too happy only Mediocre and Saul decided to help with adding stuff in, which is another case of people thinking the blog was rushed since “I got mad”...no. This one was pushed aside so many times and many people had a chance to work on it, but clearly no one had the drive to at all until the very end when I started helping.

Aside from the timestamps, I don’t think the blog looks bad at all though, it gives a great deepdive into Gwen’s abilities and offers some new Ben 10 stat arguments not really seen as of yet, and goes in depth enough despite this being fairly one-sided. It's just a case of learning from mistakes and not greenlighting blogs people won’t commit to because a lot of people jumped on this one then opted out due to other projects. It is what it is. Definitely made people more curious about a Ben vs Hal rematch though…

Thank you to Saul, gio, Momo, Kuma, Mediocre, Hippo, Dek, Br3ndan, Nightfall, Cardinal, Guru, Fiction, Fade, Time, iceking, Green, Tru

Nightwing vs Gatchaman

(Kaiser)

(Landon1195)

(SirusStuff)

(Flip v1)

(Flip v2)

What a blog this was. First started as a pitch from Kaiser, who at the time I was only barely meeting through Cass vs Laura, and I think it was meant to be on his blog server so I may have accidentally moved it to mine without asking him…oops. For the longest time this was objectively an r/deathbattlematchups idea you’d see here and there, where the thumbnails look cool and the connections look solid, but no one has looked into Gatchaman at all, so I was more than happy to look into this match and what it had to offer. I do maintain its Nightwings best if he was to ever come back on the show, the bird motif coupled with the relationship they have with their respective teams and the weight of being a leader/approval of their father figures really makes it all come together very well, and the blog really helped me appreciate Nightwing as a character more, where I reread some of his most important stories like Robin Year One and Black Mirror. 

But man, the spiral this blog went down was hilarious. At the most basic level, most of us assumed Ken was gonna win off of some city level stats but still be slower. Where things started going downhill is when I posted some laser dodging feats, which we thought would’ve been pretty unreliable until we realized they are legitimate lasers. Eventually, the speed advantage shrunk to about a 1.4x difference. Nightwing was still faster…but not by a lot really. Then we started to find some…weird feats. Galactor plans that involved blocking the sun’s light. Ships that were described as having the power of a newborn star. Then Ken apparently scales to the power of his vehicles. These vehicles casually have nukes. Ken then got a sword that molecularly disintegrates you.Then the Thundercats crossover was actually usable. Then the Galactor’s had a legit sun disk-ass feat. Before we knew it, Ken was solar system level. We sent Nightwing to DIE. We killed him if you will. The more feats we learned about, the more I shook my head and laughed like I was going insane. This felt like a crime. 

Ok that's an exaggeration but it was funny. Everyone who watched Gatchaman reported that they loved it, and the weird crazy plots each episode had. The Galactor’s methods of taking over earth via its natural resources was just…fantastic. And it became a lot of peoples preferred for both also. Nightwing’s side isn’t without its muscle though, we all worked hard to make the scaling images not feel like a copy + paste of the other street tier blogs throughout the year, and I do think it felt like a nice tribute to his character and just how important Dick Grayson is as Nightwing. 

I’m just gonna leave you with this art made by SirusStuff from the blog.

Duo Blogs: Leatherface vs Hillbilly/Reaper vs U.S. Agent

I was fortunate enough to work with two very dear friends on some collaboration projects, Twice/Anfang and ThiccGrimes, for two blogs that I think do need an introduction since these were ideas that definitely had ambition behind them. This will be more brief since it was working with one person.

Leatherface vs Hillbilly: Grimes and I wanted to do this for a few reasons, the big one being to sell people on the match being good since most people write it off as “Bubba vs his inspiration” and that’s it, which while true, it’s…still the only fight with a chainsaw dynamic. And also I love Dead by Daylight, and it was easy to implement on a blog since it had a deepdive, and Grimes had fully researched the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise so we put two and two together and cooked a banger. It was pretty fun and easy for the both of us, took me less then a day to fill out Hillbilly’s side and he had some surprising fun but fun stuff. Bubba being able to summon lighting to his chainsaw while Hillbilly overcharges into him goes hard also. I was fully expecting Bubba to win but he surprisingly didn’t have anything at small building level, and it's even more funny that he got beaten by his own Dead by Daylight perk, Franklin’s Demise, since we didn’t give Bubba DbD since that just takes away Hillbilly’s entire unique set of abilities. Overall we had fun, it was a neat little blog to do and working with the king of horror was a pleasure.

Reaper vs U.S. Agent: This ones been in the works for a while. Twice brought it up to me at the beginning of this year pretty much, and the connections were really solid so I was in! At the time I wasn’t doing much if you remember so I was down for anything, and I was not expecting Bang’s Blogs to become what it is today so this idea definitely got lost in transmission along the way, and it had a delay worse then the first two blogs, but Twice and I understood that it was simply because we were busy with much bigger projects, like in his case, Black Cat vs Catwoman. I had fun researching Walker since he had some surprising stuff in his arsenal, we were just laughing at the fact that he is one of many characters that also had pym particles for no reason at all, other than to hit people with a shield surprise attack. After reading all of his comics I’ve come to actually hate the fact that he’s put against Peacemaker and Soldier Boy, but that’s a rant for other times. The final product was great though. I was very scared since at the moment, Overwatch had so many blogs that people felt were annoying and all the same and just repetitive, so seeing people call this a more fresh and good one was a relief, and I know Twice worked hard on that front to make it possible. As with the edits! It meant a lot Twice decided to debut the more episodic looking edits and gifs on our blog, and it is without a doubt the highlight of it all, definitely sold more people on the match along with his fantastic script, and it’ll definitely set a precedent for more edits like this to come for the future of blogs at large. 

Closing Thank Yous

The Artists

Bang’s Blogs couldn’t look as fantastic as they have without the dedication, willingness, and straight up backbone that is the Artists. These guys and gals have made elite thumbnails, banger gifs, fantastic edits across the board that just make the blogs pop out, and I’m sure as this new wave of edits comes about they’re going to adapt to do even greater things. 

To Ninjamonkey, Cabbage, SirusStuff, TWILTY, Flip, Shantie, L.A.D., Floorgor, Ani, and Door-Kun, thank you for making Bang’s Blogs look like five star meals. 

The Math Crunchers

These are people who have taken time out of their day to do some calculations for the feats we found along the way, or things that needed to be recalculated, which helped maintain Bang’s Blogs having lots of information to look at and numbers behind them all.

To Rina Antiqua, NormallyNormal, Kaiser, and Niko, thanks for answering the most important questions of the blogs and their debates. 

Script Makers

A few of the Bang’s Blogs had people kind enough to offer up writing scripts for their blogs, as a way to enhance the fight idea and give it living proof of how it could work as a fight or a DB episode. 

To Morkez Marihser, Pasbros, Tman, Saul, TWILTY, Blue Igneous, Spidey, and Twice, thank you for taking the time to bring these fights to life on the pen and (electronic) paper. 

Closing Thoughts

It’s been a big year for fanmade blogs. Death Battle was gone for a while and we weren’t sure how it would pan out, so the community decided to take matters into our own hands and that’s a very beautiful thing. A big takeaway from all of this for me has been that nothing is ever off-limits, and you can only go bigger and better with each step you take. And also to not be so hard on yourself. For all the “misses” I’ve thought I had this year with something like Kyle vs Simon’s many long nights or some debates/discussions turning sour, I’ve had so many hits and I should be proud of that. Here’s just a short list of the things I think each blog accomplished:

Cassandra Cain vs X-23: Put new life into the street tier discussions…even though that probably didn’t age well this year, but it is now in the pile of ‘big street tier fights’ to many people.

Larfleeze vs Annihilus: Made people really want the match in the community, nothing too crazy admittedly.

Sadako vs Slenderman: Changed the horror blog/match scene and put it on the map indefinitely, along with giving Creepypasta more of a look into from its fans. 

Clayface vs Sandman: Gave the match a proper handshake as far as debate goes, and became at the time, the first Batman victory over Spider-Man technically. 

Revan vs Dark Urge: Put Dungeons & Dragons in the spotlight, which has opened the gates to many other big matches like Vecna vs Dr. Doom, and has given more exposure to the Legends side of Star Wars, and became one of the first matches with greater odds of possibly being an episode soon after its conception. 

Knight vs Apollyon: Buffed the stats of Dead by Daylight.

Mandalorian vs Courier: Gave some exposure to non-Force user stuff. 

Link vs Tarnished: Proper look into Elden Ring (Twilty please correct me if I’m wrong) for the first time, along with another match that felt significantly more enhanced in happening possibly down the line, especially with Lousy, a researcher reading it which was cool.

Sterling Archer vs Stan Smith: Gave both Archer and American Dad a more proper deepdive (bearing the goated Roger respect thread), and put it on the map of cartoon matches people want to see happen, as well as put it on the map of ‘espionage’ themed matches. 

Bubsy vs Gex: Got somethin’ you wanna say about us? After all we’ve been through you’ve got nothing? Nothing at all? Not “wow they had a cosmology section”! Cmon, the fact that we were talked about alone should speak volumes of the sheer impact we’ve had on the lives of so many youth in the 90s! I am purr-sonally offended. As am I, my inferior furball. We deserve better. Ok ok fine. It was pretty fun seeing a blog incorporate some 4th wall breaking shenanigans, the ideas written for these two were fantastic. I’m in your home, Bang. 

Leatherface vs Hillbilly: Gave Texas Chainsaw Massacre a deepdive.

Ellen Ripley vs Sarah Connor: An awesome Halloween blog that gave some new arguments for both Alien and Terminator, along with being the 2nd horror survivor match to receive a blog aside from Ash Williams vs Frank West.

Atom Eve vs Gwen Tennyson: Gave Ben 10 as a series more new arguments for who could scale to what, and opened the door of interest to pretty much how any other Ben 10 match would go.

Nightwing vs Gatchaman: Gave Gatchaman a fully fledged deepdive into all its media, putting the franchise at large in the VS community with its coverage, spawning some new possibilities and ideas, not just for Ken himself but for other characters like Joe and the Galactors.

Subconsciously I never wanted to admit that the Bang’s Blogs experience has been my favorite part of the year, because I didn’t want to feel like a sweaty discord mod who hasn’t shaved and probably hasn’t gone outside all year by saying an online experience was better then something in real life, but this year has been awful for me to the point where I’m more forgiving of myself to be happy that I had a fun time working on all these blogs. And it don’t roll it off the tongue very well but I’m glad to have a place where people see me as a friend worth spending time with and talking to, not just because we share a silly hobby, and I appreciate the many kind words people have given me as far as the good job I am doing in this whole endeavor. I’ve met a lot of great people through this blog this year and I hope I can continue to meet more, and I do hope I can continue to get better and make sure that in real life I can overcome the odds, since I don’t want to take for granted the people that do try and lift me up when I feel like quitting. On that note, I wish I could write up individual thank yous for everyone I could but I feel so weird and cringe doing that, I didn’t even feel good about writing this. 

But lastly, thank you to everyone who's read my blogs and helped with them, and made sure I didn’t stop for a moment. I didn’t think I would have a blast doing this, but making blogs has been one of the best parts of the Death Battle experience for me. In just less than a year, we did some amazing things that thousands of people have read about, and built up a server that’s only gonna get bigger with all the things we plan to do in the year of 2025. Some of these might become actual episodes down the line, that’s fucking insane. You should all be proud of yourselves and remember that I think you’re fantastic, and I look forward to seeing you all as we pierce the heavens of what defines the VS matches we love. I’ll see you in 2025 with Miraak vs Deathwing to kick us off, peace out Bang Gang, and there’s a bobcat in my house so I gotta go.